Backup to blank dvd media

Well I managed to get my hands into Acronis True Image Home v10, but I busted my back last night trying to backup to a bootable media dvd with no success. I read the manual and it says its disabled by default but I couldn't get it enabled, so I can only backup to a file in a hard drive.

If your used space on the hard drive is such that the backup process will require 3 or less DVDs then I would say okay, go ahead and try to work on the problem. But if it requires 4 or more then putting your backup on the hard drive is a much much better way to do this. Why, because the surprise comes when you have to restore this backup from the DVDs. It requires you to swap those discs in and out forever, it seems. True Image does not call for the discs in the order they were made.

Now if you want to have some extra security by having a backup on dvd, then do the 2-step process. First make the backup in dvd sized chunks on to a hard drive. True Image makes it easy to specify the backup image file sizes. Many here use a size of 1492Mb (something to do with a sailor landing in the USA many years ago - ). This size will let you burn three of the images on to one dvd with very little waste.

My backup consists of less than a dvd, I just have the essential stuff installed on WinXP Pro Corp SP2... drivers, and the everyday apps y use the most.

What I'm aiming to get is a single bootable dvd with the backup, so I wont have to do any swapping of the boot cd and the backup media... I've been trying hard to enable that function but I don't seem to find how or where, the manual does not say where or how so its no help

I'm sorry to say this but it still does not creat bootable dvd, it keeps on creating *.tib file on hard drive... which is driving me crazy cause I want the bootable dvd

Click to expand...

You should have been given the option to choose the destination.

BTW, I went over to the person who has ver 10 and we tested the feature to create the bootable DVD to include the image. The good news is that for the size of used space the image spanned 3 dvds, and when we inserted the first dvd, the acronis menu booted up.

The bad news is that when I selected the archive, TI said the image was corrupt. We didn't pursue this any further as we both use external hard drives to save backups and it took over an hour to produce the backups on the dvds.

BTW, you can also set the option to include the bootable image during the Backup process. You have to choose Manual options somewhere where the process defaults to Automatic. Search around ... you will find it.

Hope you are able to make a successful dvd. Be sure to test it on a spare hard drive even though, as in our test, the "Completed Successfully" message was shown.

I was away for a while, and since I have not been succesfull at backing up the OS on a dvd I decided to post screens of the process...

The 1st image shows how the application can't see my dvd drive under my computer so I type the letter for it and it reads as a cd and not dvd, let it be clear that I have a virtual drive installed with latest daemon tools which is not shown as well. The other two pics show the outcome of the process:

Of course I select under Tools>Options>Default Backup Options>Media Components but I get the same error everytime, the manual says the bootable media option has to be enabled but I don't see how. Don't know what else to try!

10x k0lo, I finally got the backup on a bootable cd... I have a new issue.

When I boot the dvd I get the first menu, If I pick Full True Image it loads for a while then I get a black screen DOS style with some white words which I dont know what they mean and it goes no further.

But if I choose safe mode It loads but I can't pick the backup image from dvd because the browser does not show the dvd drive again, it just lets me choose from hard drive.

Weird application this is, am I doing something wrong?... I though this app was easier.

Now that you have the conflict with Daemon Tools sorted out you should first create a bootable rescue CD using the "Create Bootable Rescue Media" link on the main screen of TrueImage. This will let you troubleshoot further.

The most problematic issue with TrueImage is that it will almost always work perfectly while running in Windows because it has access to all of the Windows drivers for your hardware, however, when running from the rescue media it boots into Linux (for the full version) or a variant of DOS (for the safe version). The full version may not have all of the drivers for your hardware or may sometimes need a kernel argument added when booting to make it work with your particular hardware. The safe version, being DOS-based, will not work with USB devices.

Anyway; that's the explanation for why you may be having difficulty. I would recommend that you create a bootable rescue CD (or USB flash drive) and get this working first. Post back any error messages that you see when starting the full version and someone on here will help you get that sorted out. Once you get this working, your bootable DVD backups will work too.